Hello all,

I've been a lurker around the boards for awhile now - off and on as I work on my world, then rework it, then re-re-work it again. First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has ever posted or published the innumerable helpful tips and suggestions which those of us lurkers have relied on, but I'd like to extend my appreciation to two members specifically for their tutorials (either as PDFs or YouTube videos) - the first being Ascension, whose Atlas guideline has fueled many sleepless nights and a true appreciation for the work that goes into these maps, and the second being Kindari, whose video tutorial of his version of the Ascension Atlas style was incredibly well done, clear and has resulted in a phenomenal learning curve of Photoshop (as it pertains to mapping) and hot-keys. Thank you both for making it possible for a novice like me to actually produce something that has my gamer friends go "Wow!"

Of course, I'm not going to show them the maps you guys produce - that would just be embarrassing for me. :p

I'm not sure how much I'll be posting - not only am I a novice/n00b with Photoshop, I'm also starting a new semester (I teach English at a Uni here). I'm almost finished my home-brew map (just adding cities and titles), and depending on how much time I have, I may start mapping out cities as well, so I will continue to make ample use of the forums, probably to ask stupid questions (okay, okay, there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots, like me) when it comes to city design. I have wondrous images in my head which will probably fail to make it to the PS image, but I'm okay with that.

Anyway, once again, thank you everyone for your work here - I'll be upping rep where I can as I lurk through the pages.

Cheers
Rob (aka Dash)